Weather Forecast

Open. Like a room without furniture. But the only echoes you hear in these spaces are from the wind.

Flat. Like freshly laid cement. Yet nothing is man-made about this land unless you count the occasional irrigation systems sprinkled upon the raw.

There is a raw kind of land here. Like the bare innocence of a child, still vulnerable, still so tenderly exposed and true.

I’ve always thought labeling this area as the prairie was a bit cliche. Instead, I like to think of it as The Show. The smooth land acting as a stage to host a production. The sun is a spotlight to illuminate the backdrops and actors — but sometimes it can steal the lead. It becomes an actor that helps display the parts in the script that you didn’t know before.

Those coarse truths that you eventually find as The Show goes on.

In my college math class this year I desperately found myself wishing that I could simply have a preview of the next test coming up — a little sneak peak at what I was going to have to know.

Sometimes in life, we want to do the same. We want the answers. We don’t want to have to mess around with studying the wrong stuff. We fear once a big test comes, the method to solving the equation will slip right through our mind’s fingers.

The unknown number will choke us with uncertainty, leaving us looking up at the clock for mercy, pleading in a panic that it will freeze until you have things figured out, before the class period is over. Or better yet, wishing it could just tell us the truth, the answer.

To be painfully honest, we don’t get a sneak peak at the tests. We have to find our own truths, discover our own solutions, without anyone telling us how to. The divine beauty of this land is it reminds me of this reality in its openness. It provides nothing that will pad you with a little extra comfort. Instead, you have to find your own in the absence of clutter.

When the sun is hitting a field just right, each row aligns in a grand scheme, working together in a swirl of emotion.

Now the irrigation system is transformed into the director, constructing one heck of a show. Or better yet, an artist, with her pallet scraping together brown and green on the earth’s canvas. It’s a masterpiece scattering the blessed farmer’s yield, determining their hard work, nurturing each and every field, each and every row.

If you were to drive past these rows they look like the rise and fall of lungs, living and breathing. If you were to look down upon them from above it would be like looking at a tree cut straight through, exposing the rings of its life.

This is life. And it’s okay to live in the open with untied ends and uneven edges. It’s okay to live a little coarsely, a little clunky — to dance in a mess of brave vulnerability.

Baby calves will kick and dance in between the rows of a field. Like them, maybe we all need to find our own rhythm in the in between.

We should find our unique part in the show, and nail each line — be our own lead. Thrive in the complex plot and unknown ending.

Open. With a kind of freedom only the wind knows.

Flat. Like a stage hosting its show without the restriction of a curtain. This land feels like the smooth skin of a baby. It smells like the dirt and hay in my grandpa’s barn.

You want to know the really beautiful part, though? The irrigation system will keep providing. Stalks will line the field with growth even when the farmer didn’t know the details of the yield, the production.

We don’t have to know all the answers. Don’t panic looking up at the clock. Instead embrace the tangled unknowns, the uncomfortable in betweens. The answers will come.

The Show will go on and the irrigation system will continue to dance in its circle. Eventually the field’s green truth will be exposed.